Contact centers frequently handle calls where a party makes a payment for a service or good. This may be, for example, in conjunction with an incoming call where the remote party pays for a service, or in conjunction with an outbound call where the remote party purchases a good. Quite often, the payments occur using a bank card of some form, such as a credit card, which facilitates consumers desiring to make payments over the phone. A very extensive and developed infrastructure exists for processing credit card payments, and consumers are accustomed to doing so over the phone.
Maintaining security of bank card numbers is vitally important, and the need for this is highlighted by frequent news reports of identity theft. One approach for accomplishing a credit card payment over the phone involves the remote party verbally indicating to a salesperson the type of credit card, the credit card number, expiration date, and a security code. This approach of verbally indicating this information to a salesperson carries risks, as the information may be written down by the salesperson for later entry and the information may be subsequently compromised. For example, the information may be written down on a piece of paper and later discarded, and only later discovered the information was compromised and used for nefarious purposes. Many businesses structure their internal credit card payment systems so that a salesperson is not directly involved in entering or transcribing the bank card information.
One approach for avoiding contact center employees exposure to a customer's bank card information is to establish a conference call with an automated interactive voice response (“IVR”) system that processes bank card information. This is referred to herein as a Bank Card Payment Processing System (“BCPPS” or “BCPP system”). The BCPPS prompts the remote party for bank card payment information and receives responses, such as in the form of dual tone multiple frequency (“DTMF”) tones entered by the party. However, if the agent is on the conference call, the agent still hears the DTMF information entered by the party. It is possible that unauthorized personal may use recording devices to record the tones, which can then be later decoded to provide the credit card information. Further, some IVRs employ speech recognition so that the customer may speak the digits to the BCPPS, as opposed to providing DTMF. This makes it even easier for the information to be compromised should the agent hear this.
Various approaches have been designed for muting the agent's audio during this process, but the process is complicated by defining an approach that easily functions with different types of IVRs, such as third-party operated IVRs. Thus, improved and simplified approaches are needed for controlling the agent's audio path when a remote party interacts with a BCPPS for purposes of paying by a bank card.